“It’s very odd being on the East Coast, in any big city, and they ask you to play on Mardi Gras,” Vreeland said recently. “If you’re already booked, they say, ‘Can you make it on Wednesday?’ Last year we played on (Ash) Wednesday, and the following Saturday.”

As Mardi Gras celebrations proliferate around the country, Vreeland observes, “it will turn into whatever it turns into.”

So, too, his creative career.

Before decamping to Atlanta in 1984, he inhabited a transitional, eclectic period in New Orleans music. Among other projects, he fronted the Rhapsodizers, the forerunner of the Radiators.

On Saturday, July 30, Vreeland is back in town for two shows at Snug Harbor with Spanky & the Love Handles, a blues-derived trio that includes his wife, Beth, on bass and Bob Rice on drums.

Vreeland’s New Orleans resume of the ’70s and early ’80s encompasses Ritz Hotel, an ensemble that included future Radiators bassist Reggie Scanlan. The Rhapsodizers featured Vreeland, the late Becky Kury on bass, and two future Radiators, keyboardist Ed Volker and drummer Frank Bua.

The Rhapsodizers established the weekly Wednesday night gig at Luigi’s, a pizza joint near the University of New Orleans campus, which the Radiators later inherited. As Vreeland recalls, “Suck the Heads,” the classic Radiators ode to crawfish, originated in the back of his white van outside Tipitina’s prior to a Rhapsodizers gig.

At the 1976 New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, the Rhapsodizers backed Earl King, the rhythm & blues guitarist who wrote “Trick Bag” and “Let the Good Times Roll.” Vreeland and King hit it off. They often hung at the Tastee Donuts on Jackson Avenue, King’s de facto office.

“He got pigeonholed as a blues guy, but our interest was more experimental. We became friends because we could talk abstractly about things he was interested in: The New Orleans tradition with the occult, spaceships, the paranormal, the invisible things around us.”

Vreeland also fronted a revolving cast of musicians called Room Service, which at times included guitarist Spencer Bohren and drummer Bruce Raeburn, now curator of Tulane’s Hogan Jazz Archives. At one point, Room Service boasted bassist George Porter Jr. and drummer Zigaboo Modeliste of the Meters, plus guitarist Jimmy Robinson. At the ’83 Jazz Fest, their repertoire ranged from the Vapors’ “Turning Japanese” to an Appalachian-style remake of Jimi Hendrix’s “Foxy Lady.”

In 1984, Vreeland, bedeviled by substance abuse, moved to Atlanta. By then, New Wave and punk had arrived in New Orleans. “I was starting to feel like a tourist by the time I left. That can happen anywhere as things change and evolve around you. You either get with it, or you do something else.”

In Atlanta, he laid low for a few years to “sober up and re-tool everything. I hit restart.” He eventually joined a blues band called Code Blue and built a career as a visual artist, working mostly with acrylic paint and abstract symbols.

Along the way he met Rice and the future Beth Vreeland. The threesome has collaborated off and on since the late 1980s. “It’s an amazing relationship that I have with both of these people. None of us play the most amazing licks. It’s what it is together.”

In the ’90s, he opened a studio in Atlanta called Railroad Earth. His credits as a producer include the subdudes’ 1996 album “Primitive Streak.”

He’s promoting two new releases of his own. Spanky & the Love Handles’ self-titled second album features contributions from Ed Volker and local songwriter Louie Ludwig. Vreeland says the new record is far more refined, sonically, than the trio’s debut. “There’s nothing wrong with that first record, but it’s like home cooking. This record is more like going to eat at Galatoire’s.”

Another new album, “Defender of the Faith,” collects recordings with drummer Carlo Nuccio, keyboardist David Torkanowsky, violinist Theresa Andersson and other locals from the ’90s and early 2000s.

In New Orleans, Vreeland generally invites a keyboardist and/or a trumpeter to join the Love Handles onstage. His wife and Rice have lobbied for Saturday’s gig to be just the three of them — to “go commando, as my wife says.”

Which might be for the best. Love Handles shows have “gotten so psychedelic that it’s a rare person that can hang,” Vreeland said. “People have a tendency to want to play notes, and try to be entertaining. We’re just getting into sounds.”

On Saturday, “commando” or not, they’ll showcase material from the new album, Earl King compositions, and perhaps a James Booker-inspired take on “Junco Partner.”

The gig will “harken back to Luigi’s,” Vreeland said. “We’ll raise the flag and see who salutes.”